How smart is your data center infrastructure?

Today’s mega trends – cloud computing, mobility, security, and big data – are causing a stir in the data center marketplace. Even as these forces transform the market, trendsetters are reinventing the data center. One such leader is Dell, which showcases its innovations at Dell Solutions Centers (DSCs) around the world.

Smart data center infrastructure
DSCs focus on technical customer engagements, cross-domain and industry solutions, and sales enablement, among other activities. “If we lost a data center at a decisive time in the customer engagement, it could have a major impact upon a project,” says Brian Hayden, Global Infrastructure Lead Dell.

Before designing customer solutions, DSC looks at it from an end-to-end point of view. In addition to collaborating with local organizations to ensure customer data center builds have sufficient power and cooling capacity, Hayden oversees processes in architecting the infrastructure, which at times means modernizing facilities with the latest generation IT equipment.Some considerations during a customer build include:

Full and total cost of ownership

Power and cooling demand

Efficiency of each server

Scalability and agility

Partnering for success
The relationship between Schneider Electric and Dell is a good example of how world-class enterprises rely on solid business partnerships to succeed. As global leaders, both companies share a similar vision that focuses on innovative technology. And they are both experienced in solving tough IT challenges while helping customers meet their business goals and maximize their technology budgets.

“The big difference with Schneider Electric is the modular approach. They handle every single aspect of the build. They don’t just drop off the kit; they handle all of the build. And obviously they have the integrated solution with the software stack as well, which provides the complete package to monitor and manage the data center,” says Hayden.

Addressing power and cooling challenges
DSC’s Limerick Campus is supported by three data center facilities, each with unique characteristics. In total, the data centers host 70 racks consisting of over 1500 enterprise servers, switches, storage, and networking equipment. “As compute nodes have gotten denser, so has storage equipment. As the devices increase in power density, they strain the power and cooling capacity available in the data center,” says Hayden.

Today, Schneider Electric solutions are helping DSCs to address their power and cooling challenges – whether a traditional raised floor environment with perimeter CRAC or the latest generation, high-efficiency solution with segregated hot and cold aisles and integrated Uniflair free cooling. In fact, Schneider Electric solutions have enabled DSCs to take advantage free cooling for 302 days, which netted the company $25k in energy savings. And by adopting PUE as a metric for its data center test environments, DSC managers can proactively monitor and measure efficiency using proven tools such as Schneider Electric Data Center Expert.